by R. L. Pound

Created on: February 06, 2009   Last Updated: February 27, 2009

Downfall is a German film (German name: Der Untergang) told from the perspective of Hitler's secretary and her experience of the lives of Adolf Hitler and leading Nazis during his last days in the bunker, in 1945 Berlin.

The film was released in 2004, was Oscar nominated and is listed among the top 250 films of the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

The story itself, whilst told from the perspective of secretary Traudl Junge in the film, is in fact based on a number of sources: portions of memoirs from Albert Speer, Traudl Junge, doctor Ernst-Gunther Schenck and Siegfried Knappe

as well as the book 'Inside Hitler's Bunker' by historian Joachim Fest.

The aim of this essay is to analyse the film against the historical context of the Holocaust, and the importance that films like this play in not only portraying the victims of the Holocaust, but portraying the perpetrators as ordinary men.

A War Movie?

Many watching Downfall will see this as a war movie, which it is without doubt. Germany is struggling to beat the Allies, and this all comes down to one man's struggle with himself Adolf Hitler. The leading Nazis are aware that time is closing in and urge him to do what is right for the country.

But viewed in the wider context of World War Two and the Nazi regime, Downfall undoubtedly has a lot to do with the Holocaust and those that initiated the murder factories across Europe, killing 6 million Jews and millions of Poles, Russians, Roma, homosexuals, disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses and more.

In short, any portrayal of Hitler as an ordinary man has something to do with our understanding of the Holocaust. How could an ordinary man have committed such evil?

Our Image of the Victims and the Perpetrators of the Holocaust

Like everybody else the perpetrators of the Holocaust were and are human beings; a product of modern day society that cannot be written off as pure evil'.

In any question of portrayal of the Holocaust the emphasis is on the victims those who died and suffered under Hitler and the Nazis' regime. These victims need to be
humanized' in order for us to remember them on an individual level and not just as 6 million.

However, in focusing our attention on the individual victims we are at risk of separating the good' of the victims from the evil' of the perpetrators. Doing so certainly helps to avoid uncomfortable questions such as how did this happen?' and will this ever happen again?'. The danger is that, though we speak of never again', we are at risk of learning absolutely

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